by VioletLeBeaux | Mar 26, 2011 | Craft, Decoden, Decoden-Tutorials, Tutorial
Long time no post huh? Things have been a bit quiet here lately, it’s been one of those weeks where everything seems to be piling on >_< I’ve had the flu so feeling fairly un-energetic during a week that was very high paced for work. All of that means no energy left over for blogging which really sucks 🙁 I should be back up to posting every day next week again though and I’ve almost finished setting up my gallery and some other things which I’ve been planning for a long time so please look forward to that!
Back to it, one thing I did manage to do this week was deco my purse lip colour pack. I bought the container from Daiso several weeks ago and filled it up with lip colours that I use regularly.
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I was just going to post the deco part of this project but after receiving a question from the lovely Mrs Aunty Leroy about how to save lipsticks which have been trashedenjoyed by kids, I thought I’d add in the rest!
This is the container I bought from Daiso, it was $2.80 and has 12 spots as well as a mirror and a tiny useless brush.
Using a sharp (sterilised) knife I cut off the end of each of my favorite lipsticks and smooshed them into place. It’s not particularly pretty but works like a charm XD
Lastly I took a lighter to it and melted the tops so they all looked nicer. Obviously if you plan on doing this please be very careful of fire and plastic.
After that it was just a matter of wiping any excess or overflow colour off.
Now let’s talk about the deco!
I’ve discovered the joy of backwards tweezers for deco 😀 😀 😀
I’ve used regular tweezers before but if you’re working for more than an hour or so they can give serious hand crampage but reverse tweezers where they scissor shut automatically are genius! Still not as good as the Magic Pick but very awesome none the less.
So first thing I did was decide on the design as per usual. This I wanted to be more plain and subtle. I have a lot of deco stuff in my handbag so it’s nice to keep some of it plain for variety. I picked a center piece (big metal diamante bow) and basically filled in the rest of the lid with rainbow finish acrylic gems my Mother found on sale at a junk store.
First I glued the center piece in place with epoxy glue.
Once it was dry I laid down a line of glue along the bottom edge and placed the first row of diamantes.
I used the edge of my magic tray to make sure they dried completely level. Super important because if you screw up the foundation row the rest is very difficult to get straight!
I continued around the outside until I had a complete border.
Then it was just a matter of filling in the middle!
I use 5min epoxy glue so I work in small sections that I can easily fill in that time. I put down one row of gems around the outside row and worked inside in rows.
This is the first section finished…
Rinse and repeat leaving space around the bow to fill in later.
Once the rest was dry I filled in around the bow as closely as possible while following the pattern.
And finished!
And there you have it ^_^ A good evening craft that only took as long as 1 episode of Buffy XD
What do you guys think? Hope you’re all having a good weekend!
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by VioletLeBeaux | Mar 22, 2011 | Clothing-Tutorials, Craft, Tutorial
A while ago Sandra wrote in to me asking how I would go about repairing a knitted jumper (sweater for those in the US) that had been stained in an accident in her Chemistry class. While I was cleaning out my wardrobe I noticed that a some of them were in need of repairs. With knitted items you pretty much have the following options for repairing stains:
- Try to soak/bleach/wash it out if possible. (Tia says: Please remember if the sweater/jumper/cardigan is pure wool NOT to try bleach first. Bleach basically disintegrates wool.)
- If you know how to knit/darn then you can carefully remove the section and repair with similar yarn.
- Patch it over with something cute. I’ve seen sweaters like this with adorable little felt patches in various shapes all over.
- Embroider something cute over it.
This was the result:
The sweater below is one that I just wear around the house when it’s cold. It looks nice over a dress and is made of soft acrylic yarn so very low maintenance. But it’s quite plain… so to demonstrate one idea to cover a stain I decided to jazz it up a bit.
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What I used:
- Old pair of socks that are too cute cute to throw out but I never actually wear.
- Needle and thread
- Lace
- Matching ribbon
I cut off the top part of the sock which had the cut pattern.
I decided to use them to make pockets so I flattened the fabric out.
Then cut the bottom into a heart shape.
Using the needle and thread I gathered around 3cm of fabric at the top in the middle.
After putting it together you ca see the heart shape forming ^_^
I stitched around the raw edges to attach it to the jumper.
Taadaa pocket 😀
Repeated on the other side…
To cover the raw edges I then added lace around the edges.
And on both sides…
I finished the picked with a small matching bow on one side.
To add one more piece of interest I used some spotty ribbon and stitched it in a zigzag pattern up one side and ended it in a bow.
Very very very simple ribbon embroidery ^_^
And there we go! Finished in around 30 minutes and nice and cute ^_^
This probably the easiest way possible to cover stains and I personally love the result!
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by VioletLeBeaux | Mar 21, 2011 | Baking, Craft, Storage/Utility-Tutorials, Tutorial
A lot of you have probably seen the tutorial I did on making an eyelash storage solution in the shape of a yummy cake. Well with the direction my house decorating kick is heading the whole cake thing doesn’t really go with my theme. The limited bench space also doesn’t leave much room for a several layered cake so time to find a solution which was pretty and also space saving.
This is what I came up with:
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It can be hung on the wall, I can see my lashes at a glance and it takes much less effort to put everything away. This is an awesome solution for girls that have a lot of lashesSo tutorial time! |
What you need:
- Cardboard
- Lace
- Sticky tape (the type of tape is important)
- Glue gun
- Clear plastic or plastic wrap
- Pretty wrapping paper or fabric
Cut the cardboard to the shape and size you want the finished product. Make sure there is enough room for all of your lashes, no point going to all this effort and then having no space for future purchases! ^_^
Measure and cut enough wrapping paper to cover the front of the cardboard. From this point the photos have a bit of glare on them unfortunately because the paper I was using is slightly reflective.
Fold the edges over and tape in place…
Fold over the other sides and tape too…
Now it’s time to cover the whole thing in clear plastic or cling wrap. This will protect it from any water that happens to splash there.
Tape the edges of the plastic over and around the back too.
Now you should have something like this:
Lay out your eyelashes and decide how many rows of pairs you have room for. I decided on three.
It’s now time add the part which will hold the lashes in place: wide strips of tape sticky side out. You need to be careful about what kind of tape you use, it needs to be sticky but not so sticky that you can’t get the lashes back off! Gaff and duct tape are too sticky, you want to use something like this clear plastic tape which is not particularly sticky. I suggest testing it out on an eyelash you don’t want anymore. It should hold the lashes securely when you put a corner on but it should not be at all hard to remove them by gently pulling the corner which is not attached.
For each row of lashes I put down 1 strip of tape, sticky side up.
Then fold the edges around the back and tape them im place. So you now you have 3 sticky stripes which are almost invisible.
To decorate it a little more I added a border of lace using the glue gun to hold it in place.
You could also do this same idea in an ornate picture frame just taking the glass out so you could access the sticky strips easily.
Last thing to do is add on the lashes! Lightly press the inside corners of them into the tape, you really don’t need much pressure at all and certainly not enough to disturb the curve of the lashes. Done!
And this is it in action in my bathroom!
It fits the current tone of my bathroom more than the cakes do and takes up so much less space! Do you all like the cakes or the board better?
by VioletLeBeaux | Mar 19, 2011 | Craft, Other-Tutorials, Tutorial
I think this project is one of those ones that pretty much every primary school ever attempts but I thought I would try to update it a bit!
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What you need:
- Old toilet rolls or paper towel rolls cut to a similar size
- Scissors
- Glue gun or tape
- Paper glue/glue stick
- Scalpel/exacto knife/really sharp knife
- Tea light candles
- Pretty paper
- White paint
So the first step is to cover your cardboard roll in pretty paper using the glue stick. Unfortunately this made it really hard to see what I was doing in the photos so I will use a plain roll so you can see things clearly then show the finished paper covered product.
So glue the paper securely all over and wrap it around like this. I used an old envelope ^_^
Ok once your paper is secure and dry it’s time to make the lantern! You can see from where I’ve drawn in pen below where you should cut. The line in the middle is where we will start making the cuts then the two dots are to mark where will eventually put little slits.
Use your scalpel to make a cut along the first line! Please be very very very careful when using a knife like this!
Now continue around the tube making more cuts parallel to the first one around 1cm apart. Keep going until you reach where you started.
Now make small snips around both ends around 1cm long, you should have something like this:
Next it’s time to fan the whole thing out. Gently push around the middle from the inside.
Keep pushing and use the ends to smoosh it together…
Once you push it out you should be able to create a fold and have something like this:
Now at one end fold all of the little tabbed pieces outwards 😀
Taadaa!
On the other end, fold all the little tabs inwards:
Use your glue gun or tape to hold them all in place. This is going to form the base which prevents the tea light candle from just falling out the bottom haha XD
So from the side it looks like this…
And this is what it looks like with the paper. Mine looks pretty dodgy because I was originally planning on painting it so I didn’t think to the the paper on until after it was made >_<
If your roll has brand names printed on the inside you can use the white paint to go over them. In fact you could paint it any colour you like! I didn’t bother doing it completely because this was a test run.
Now pop the tea light candle through the top opening…
And you’ve got a lantern!
Obviously you should be careful when lighting it as it is made of completely flamable materials but they make very pretty decorations and I can imagine hundreds of them strung up to my roof would look AWESOME! |
What do you guys think?
by VioletLeBeaux | Mar 14, 2011 | Craft, Other-Accessory-Tutorials, Tutorial
Nautical prints and things have been big on my mind lately so I’ve been trying to accumulate more accessories that I can add into my outfits. After Lee suggested that I make a wrapped yarn bangle from left over rainbow yarn from my year’s worth of hat I decided that would be a good crossover project 😀
This is the bangle I ended up with:
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What you need:
- Yarns of different colours and textures. I used thick light blue and very thin white
- Red ricrack
- Lace
- Hot glue gun
- Scissors
- Cardboard tube, I found this one inside a ball of crochet yarn and it’s the perfect size!
- Foam/stuffing
- Felt (optional)
- Tape
The foam I used was cut from the end of one of those latex foam memory pillows but you could use regular stuffing too.
Roughly arrange/tape the foam around the cardboard tube. It doesn’t need to be perfect because when you wrap the yarn around that will even it all out.
Tape the end of your main colour of yarn to the inside of the tube.
Start wrapping XD I decided to make things a little more interesting by wrapping the yarn on an angle.
You can see that if you keep the yarn at an even tension it will squish the foam into a uniform shape.
Keep wrapping….
and keeeeeep wrapping…
Eventually I ran out of the blue yarn and there were still a bunch of holes which were very unattractive. So I wiggled the yarn into sections this:
You can see above that I marked the sections with some crochet chain, I was planning to use all of that but it ended up looking terrible so I undid it and replaced with regular thin white yarn:
To give it a more nautical feel I laid out some red ricrack over every 3rd stripe.
As there wasn’t enough to wrap it properly, I hot glued it in place. This is what happens when I don’t have the cash to replenish my crafting stash XD I’m down to odds and ends of everything!
Lastly I glued a strip of lace on the inside of the top and bottom to add a girly touch.
And that’s it! If you wanted to make it neater you could glue a section of felt on the inside to hide all of the loose ends of yarn…. but I’m out of matching colours of felt too hahahaha! I’ve done a lot of nautical yarn related things lately, I even knitted a skirt for myself, I’ll actually have to put them all in an outfit and post that one of these days!
I really need to get some more craft supplies >_<
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by VioletLeBeaux | Mar 9, 2011 | Craft, Hair-Accessory-Tutorials, Tutorial
You’re probably all sick of pompom related tutorials by now… but I can’t seem to stop making stuff with them so you’ll have to suffer through it 😛
This is another version of the pompom hair ties that have been around, I think Daiso sells these particular ones too but this time rather than buying one I went straight to making it!
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What you need:
- Elastic
- Needle and thread
- Mini pompom yarn or pompom edging
Cut a piece of elastic, the actual length will depend on how much hair you are planning to hold with this. Thread your needle at this point too. In this tutorial I’m using black thread so you can see what I’m doing but you should pick a colour that matches the yarn you have.
Grab the end of your yarn lay it out on a table in a repeated “S” shape like this:
The width of this shape should be 2.5 times the length that you want the loops of the pompoms to be on the finished hair tie. Keep going forwards and backwards until you’ve accumulated a decent amount…
You want there to be enough to cover the piece of elastic when it’s completely stretched out like below. The blue line is how long the elastic is stretched.
Take the needle and thread it through each piece of yarn along the line indicated in blue below. It should be around 1cm from the middle.
Once you reach the other side turn around and leaving a 2cm gap go back up the other side then tie it off.
So after that you should have something like this:
Next take the piece of elastic and thread it through the track that you just made
This is the result you want…
Tie or stitch the ends of the elastic together 😀
Done!!
Now that I know how easy these things are to make I want to make a whole lot of them in different ways!!
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